Is Mexican Cartel Activity In the U.S. Exaggerated?

A recent newspaper story questioned Mexican cartel activity levels in the U.S.

A Monday Washington Post article questioned the well-established National Drug Intelligence Center's (NDIC) published statistics that U.S. Senator John McCain used to warn us about the spread of Mexican drug cartels in this country.

Quoting the stats in a speech during an Armed Services Committee hearing last year, McCain said, "The cartels now maintain a presence in over 1,000 cities."

Post reporters Scott Higham, Sari Horwitz and Steven Rich interviewed several law enforcement officials from various jurisdictions who questioned the reported activity in their areas. Many were unaware of such Mexican drug cartel activity.

The article claims that the number "is misleading at best, according to U.S. law enforcement officials and drug policy analysts interviewed by The Washington Post. They said the number is inflated because it relied heavily on self-reporting by law enforcement agencies, not on documented criminal cases involving Mexican drug-trafficking organizations and cartels."

In my humble opinion, the drug intelligence statistics on Mexican cartels in the U.S. are on the conservative side, and not exaggerated!

The local cops do a good job curbing low-level street sellers and distributors but the wholesale and major suppliers from which the local distributors get their products are not usually on the local radar. If those sources come from El Salvador, Panama, or Columbia, they almost always come through Mexico and are therefore under the sponsorship of Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTO).

Rarely are there ever any small, independent sources. Even the locally grown marijuana and locally produced methamphetamine are often under the control of Mexican DTOs. As a result, the city and county cops don't see the intelligence links in the big picture. Even locally assigned federal agents from the DEA, FBI, or Justice Department don't always understand these drug source organizations.

Believe me, I've read some intelligence reports generated by federal government analysts that seemed like they were written by science fiction writers. Reports on local or ethnic gangs from California often misunderstood the structural difference between West Coast and East Coast gangs and gave some "gang histories" gleaned from newspaper articles

The national gang intelligence statistics also were problematic because they also rely on self reporting. This ignores the problem of the tourist towns that wish to avoid painting their city as a gang turf. Some jurisdictions avoid reporting these figures entirely. It was my complaint about these erroneous federal reports early in 2000 that brought me into the NDIC loop.

When that National Drug Intelligence Center's "store front" office mentioned by the Washington Post article opened up in Johnstown, Pa., the supervising intelligence analyst, Margaret "Peggy" Potter, came out to ride with me in Los Angeles and the surrounding counties. Peggy had been the national gang intelligence analyst, and I had met her at a California Gang Investigators conference. During her several trips to California, she met with local gang cops and gang members and even hung out with and interviewed "Mundo" Mendoza of the Mexican Mafia. Her aim was always to de-mystify those federal intelligence statistics.

Peggy established great intelligence sources who were the "boots on the ground" and the most knowledgeable on the subjects of gangs and drug organizations. This included the Mexican cartels that had a great influence in California at the time. She was a strong woman who was not afraid to cut the fiction from facts. Her statistics were solidly built on verifiable facts and the experiences of intelligence-minded local law enforcement active in these investigations (unlike most other federal statistic gatherers).

I would like to also mention another law enforcement intelligence analyst whom I respect and who has written extensively on the subject of Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations. Sylvia Longmire is the author of "Cartel: The Coming Invasion of Mexico's Drug Wars," and I would recommend this book to anyone seriously interested in the activities of Mexican cartels. She was a senior intelligence analyst for California during this period.

It is interesting to me that the federal officers mentioned in the Washington Post article now working under President Obama's administration won't validate the figures obtained from their predecessors in the Bush or Clinton administrations. "It doesn't surprise me that the DEA doesn't support those numbers," said Michael F. Walther, who ran the agency between 2005 and 2012. "They like to paint a more positive portrait of the world. I stand by the work that our analysts did at NDIC."

Many of the sources for these statistics were law enforcement sensitive and when such statistics are reviewed later by other analysts who don't have the same sources, there are always questions. The Washington Post writes, "They say there are Mexicans operating here and they must be part of a Mexican drug organization," said Peter Reuter, who co-directed drug research for the nonprofit think tank Rand and now works as a professor at the University of Maryland. "These numbers are mythical, and they keep getting reinforced by the echo chamber."

So he's suggesting that red-necked bigoted cops made up these mythical figures because they were stereotyping Mexicans? More likely in my opinion, because these Mexican drug cartel operatives are not usually involved directly in the street sales, and the local distribution, they don't need to be present in large numbers. Instead the Mexican sources are supplying or transporting larger quantities of drugs to the wholesalers, who provide the drug distributors, who then supply the street venders. So it might be only a few people in a city who are DTO members and even fewer who are caught and reported.

Many of the Mexican cartel crimes in the illegal alien community go unreported. The ugly crimes of kidnapping, human trafficking, extortion, gang violence, and unsolved murders are often committed by Mexican cartel members in cities across the United States but remain unreported. These jurisdictions benefit by this under-reporting.

It has been my experience while lecturing to law enforcement agencies across the country that many jurisdictions are clueless about the activity of organized crime, and even more so about Mexican cartels, especially outside of the Southwest. Many jurisdictions are still in denial and are often influenced by the politically powerful "pro-illegal immigration" agenda. I think that maybe the Washington Post article is motivated more by this new political push to accept illegal aliens and less on questioning the validity of the old NDIC statistics.

Comments (8)

Displaying 1 - 8 of 8

Boston @ 9/2/2013 3:13 PM

God forbid we say anything about Mexican Cartels in this country. I'm still shell shocked from all the media regarding racism that has been in the fore front of this country for the past 4 years. Yes the country prefers to put their heads in the sand regarding Immigration, borders, drug wars and gangs in this country. It's a race to see who takes over the USA. Drug Cartels, Muslims or the real people who made this country great. Hell the politicians (both sides) sold us out.

Burt Tecklenburg @ 9/3/2013 6:40 AM

Living and working as a drug investigator/field supervisor in a small midwestern city where methamphetamine completely changed our community over the past 20 years, I can assure the bureaucrats that the influence of cartels in our area is REAL, and that over 90% of the meth seized here is from trafficking, directly related back to Mexico and the southwest U.S.A. NOT from "mom & pop" gram labs that the media and officials want to give so much attention to. Those people are junkies. Trafficking involves pounds of these drugs, saturation into our communities, addiction and its casualties. I am no ignorant bigot either, when I can accurately say, that while not all Mexicans in our community are drug dealers, the BIGGEST drug dealers in our community are Mexicans. Sorry if that hurts anyone, it's just the way it is.

Trigger @ 9/3/2013 12:25 PM

Let's just bury our heads in the sand and pretend that there is nothing illegal going on in our great country.

Bob@Az. @ 9/3/2013 5:41 PM

If you don't believe Sgt.Valdemars' article about the influence of the cartels, just take a look at the massive attempts via the media to oust the Sheriffs of Pinal and Maricopa counties in Arizona. Piles of money spent trying to demonize those in LE who are doing their job, outright "hits" ordered on DOC personnel by the mexican mafia from inside the prisons. Blues, Stay Safe.

JAYDEE @ 9/4/2013 3:31 AM

I worked on the US/Mexican border in California as a Canine Officer for over 15 years.

I can honestly say that the amount of drugs coming across our border is grossly under-estimated.

Example....On one particular day we seized (24) loads of drugs in one 24 hour period, (at one port of entry). Just imagine what we didn't catch.

Forget about how the government calculates what we missed. Those statistics are developed by armchair bureaucrats who really don't have a clue about the real world.

Our borders are funnels for smuggling. The Officers working there are doing their absolute best with what they have. There's just so much coming in we can't keep up with it.

And let's not forget the tens of thousands of shipping containers entering our country every day without any physical inspection. There's not enough personnel to even come close to searching containers. Maybe 5 or 10 a day get (physically) searched.

That's just a small sampling of our War on drugs.

lyn @ 9/8/2013 5:33 PM

You can see the influence if you know where and how to look.

The small town I grew up in located in the center most state next to the Canadian border has even more misery from the elimination of local good ol boys by the nationals of the nation to southern border.

Not to wax nostalgic, but even the locals in less then legitimate enterprise havebeen displaced by outsourcing.

Of course if you are a citizen and possess multiple ID you are expected to explain and explain well. But if you are not, ah well, who cares.

Somehow it just can't hold together much longer.

I am a white boy, one of my grandchildren faces discrimination from her Mexican classmates every day for being a Puerto Rican, another two nephews have had to relocate to stay employed because their work was taken over by non citizens without permission to reside within the US

All I have ever asked of anyone, of any person, is "Are you an American?"

BOOM BOOM @ 9/24/2013 10:43 AM

One of the problems is we have a weak president and an attorney general who is a complete moron. A strong president would do to Mexico what we did toManuel Noriega in Panama. You can't handle the problem? We'll handle it for you. It's all business, and it keeps many people employed. The whole war on drugs was and is a joke. It seems everyone gets their crack at it. The problem is that Mexico is our neighbor and now these new drug cartels are making up forall those years they were used by the Colombians.

Capt. Crunch @ 9/26/2013 9:47 AM

Democrats and Republicans talk about the problem but do nothing about it. A simple solution would be to take our military forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq and put them on the Mexican border and I guartee not even a mouse would get across the border.

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